SDS stands for "Sterker door Strijd" which translates as Stronger Through Strife. In 1996 some friends started the hardcoreband "Undebatable Ground". At that time there weren't alot of zines around in Rotterdam, the Dutch city Undebatable Ground is from. So we decided it would be cool to start a zine which focuses on the local hardcore / punkscene, because the scene was (and still is) really booming at that moment in time.

We wanted to call the fanzine Sterker door Strijd. (SDS) This is a slogan in Rotterdam's escutcheon. A short history lesson: In the second World War Rotterdam was bombed and almost the entire city was destroyed. Because of that Rotterdam nowadays is a high-tech city with only a few old buildings. So the people in Rotterdam had suffered a lot during the war and had rebuild the city from scratch.Because of that, queen Wilhelmina added the slogan Stronger Through Strife to the escutcheon shortly after the war. We picked this up because we wanted to make the scene stronger and blabla. You know, the usual Support your scene-bullshit.


A week and a half after we had the brainwave the zine was finished. Pretty much cut 'n paste style, we had an interview with Madball and with local bands. We copied it at school when everybody had left and we spread it for free at concerts, recordstores, music clubs etc. We spread about 500 copies and it got so popular that we released issue#2 the next month. This time we had it printed, and we made 1000 copies which were gone before we knew it.

With the succes of the zine in remembrance we decided to give a festival in April of '97. At this free SDS-festival, which was held at the Baroeg in Rotterdam, we had ten local hardcore/punk bands playing. About 500 people showed up and it was a big succes. We also released the third Sterker door Strijd at this festival. After that it took us some time to get the money which was necessary to print the next issue. This would be 64 pages and 1000 copies and still for free!!! We released it in januari of 1998. After that we knew it would be hard to pull this off again. Printingcosts got terribly out of hand and we still were in school and all. We kept on writing, but didn't really know what to do. We couldn't come up with the money! About a year after the first SDS festival we decided to have a new one. This festival would be held in Nighttown in Rotterdam and would be a benefit for an anti-racism organisation called Samen Tegen Racisme. (Together against Racism) We asked 21 local bands to be on a compilationtape that we handed out to the first 150 visitors. After that we spread some SDS newsflyers, but we weren't able to do the full zine. And then in octobre of 1999, suddenly the idea of putting all our shit on internet came up and here we are!